The Battle of Mohács was fought on 29 August 1526 near Mohács, Kingdom of Hungary, between

the forces of the Kingdom of Hungary and its allies, led by Louis II, and those of the Ottoman Empire,
led by Suleiman the Magnificent. The Ottoman victory led to the partition of Hungary for several
centuries between the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy, and the Principality of
Transylvania. Further, the death of Louis II as he fled the battle marked the end of the Jagiellonian
dynasty in Hungary and Bohemia, whose dynastic claims passed to the House of Habsburg.

Decline of Hungarian royal power (1490–1526)

After the death of the absolutist King Matthias Corvinus in 1490, the Hungarian magnates, who did not
want another heavy-handed king, procured the accession of the notoriously weak-willed
King Vladislaus of Bohemia, who reigned as King Vladislaus II of Hungary from 1490 to 1516. He was
known as King Dobře (or Dobzse in Hungarian orthography), meaning "all right", for his habit of accepting,
without question, every petition and document laid before him. The freshly-elected King Vladislaus II
donated most of the Hungarian royal estates, régales, and royalties to the nobility. Thus the king tried to
stabilize his new reign and preserve his popularity among the magnates.
Given the naive fiscal and land policy of the royal court, the central power began to experience severe
financial difficulties, largely due to the enlargement of feudal lands at royal expense. The noble estate of
the parliament succeeded in reducing their tax burden by 70–80%, at the expense of the country's ability
to defend itself. Vladislaus became the magnates' helpless "prisoner"; he could make no decision without
their consent.
The standing mercenary army (the Black Army) of Matthias Corvinus was dissolved by the aristocracy. The
magnates also dismantled the national administration systems and bureaucracy throughout the country.
The country's defenses sagged as border-guards and castle garrisons went unpaid, fortresses fell into
disrepair, and initiatives to increase taxes to reinforce defenses were stifled. Hungary's international role
declined, its political stability shaken; social progress was deadlocked. The arrival of Protestantism further
worsened internal relations in the country.
The strongest nobles were so busy oppressing the peasants and quarreling with the gentry class in the
parliament that they failed to heed the agonized calls of King Louis II (who reigned in Bohemia and
Hungary from 1516 to 1526) for support against the Turks.
In 1514, the weakened and old King Vladislaus II faced a major peasant rebellion led by György Dózsa,
which was ruthlessly crushed by the nobles, led by John Zápolya. After the Dózsa Rebellion, the brutal
suppression of the peasants greatly aided the 1526 Turkish invasion as the Hungarians were no longer a
politically united people. The resulting degradation of order paved the way for Ottoman pre-eminence.
King Louis II of Hungary married Mary of Habsburg in 1522. The Ottomans saw this Jagiellonian-Habsburg
marital alliance as a threat to their power in the Balkans and worked to break it. After Suleiman I came to
power in Constantinople in 1520, the High Porte made the Hungarians at least one and possibly two offers
of peace. For unclear reasons, Louis refused. It is possible that Louis was well aware of Hungary's situation
(especially after the Ottomans defeated Persia in the Battle of Chaldiran (1514) and the Polish-Ottoman
peace from 1525) and believed that war was a better option than peace. Even in peacetime, the Ottomans
raided Hungarian lands and conquered small territories (with border castles), but a final battle still offered
Louis a glimmer of hope. Accordingly, another Ottoman–Hungarian war ensued, and in June 1526 an
Ottoman expedition advanced up the Danube.
European events, and the Franco-Ottoman alliance

King Francis I of France was defeated at the Battle of Pavia on 24 February 1525 by the troops of
the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. After several months in prison, Francis I was forced to sign
the Treaty of Madrid.
 In a watershed moment in European diplomacy, Francis formed a formal Franco-Ottoman
alliance with Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent as an ally against Charles V. The French-Ottoman strategic,
and sometimes tactical, alliance lasted for about three centuries.
To relieve the Habsburg pressure on France, in 1525 Francis asked Suleiman to make war on the
Holy Roman Empire, and the road from Turkey to the Holy Roman Empire led across Hungary. The request
of the French king coincided well with the ambitions of Suleiman in Europe and gave him an incentive to
attack Hungary in 1526, leading to the Battle of Mohács.
Preparations

The Hungarians had long opposed Ottoman expansion in southeastern Europe, but in 1521 the
Turks advanced up the Danube River and took Nándorfehérvár (present-day Belgrade, Serbia) – the
strongest Hungarian fortress on the Danube – and Szabács (now Šabac, Serbia). This left most of
southern Hungary indefensible.

The loss of Nándorfehérvár caused great alarm in Hungary, but the huge 60,000 strong royal army
– led by the king, but recruited too late and too slowly – neglected to take food along. Therefore,
the army disbanded spontaneously under pressure from hunger and disease without even trying to
recapture Belgrade from the newly installed Turkish garrisons. In 1523, Archbishop Pál Tomori, a
valiant priest-soldier, was made Captain of Southern Hungary. The general apathy that had
characterized the country forced him to lean on his own bishopric revenues when he started to
repair and reinforce the second line of Hungary's border defense system. Pétervárad fell to the
Turks on July 15, 1526 due to the chronic lack of castle garrisons. For about 400 km along the
Danube between Pétervárad and Buda there was no single Hungarian town, village, or fortification
of any sort.

Three years later, an Ottoman army set out from Constantinople on 16 April 1526, led by Suleiman
the Magnificent personally. The Hungarian nobles, who still did not realize the magnitude of the
approaching danger, did not immediately heed their King's call for troops. Eventually, the
Hungarians assembled in three main units: the Transylvanian army under John Zápolya, charged
with guarding the passes in the Transylvanian Alps, with between 8,000 and 13,000 men; the main
army, led by Louis himself (beside numerous Spanish, German, Czech, and Serbian mercenaries);
and another smaller force, commanded by the Croatian count Christoph Frankopan, numbering
around 5,000 men. The Ottomans deployed the largest field artillery of the era, comprising some
300 cannons, while the Hungarians had only 85 cannons, though even this number was greater
than other contemporary Western European armies deployed on the battlefields during the major
conflicts of Western European powers.

The geography of the area meant that the Hungarians could not know the Ottomans' ultimate goal
until the latter crossed the Balkan Mountains, and when they did, the Transylvanian and Croatian
forces were farther from Buda than the Ottomans were. Contemporary historical records, though
sparse, indicate that Louis preferred a plan of retreat, in effect ceding the country to Ottoman
advances, rather than directly engaging the Ottoman army in open battle. The Hungarian war
council – without waiting for reinforcements from Croatia and Transylvania only a few days march
away – made a serious tactical error by choosing the battlefield near Mohács, an open but uneven
plain with some swampy marshes.
The Ottomans had advanced toward Mohács almost unopposed. While Louis waited in Buda, they
had besieged several towns (Petervarad, Ujlak, and Eszek), and crossed the Sava and Drava Rivers.
At Mohács the Hungarians numbered some 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers. The only external help was a
small contingent of Polish troops (1,500 soldiers and knights) led by the royal captain Lenart
Gnoiński (but organized and equipped by the Papal State). The Ottoman army numbered perhaps
50,000, though some contemporary and modern-day historians put the number of the Ottoman
troops at 100,000. Most of the Ottoman Balkan forces registered before this battle were described
as Bosnians or Croats.

The Hungarian army was arrayed to take advantage of the terrain and hoped to engage the
Ottoman army piecemeal. They had the advantage that their troops were well-rested, while the
Turks had just completed a strenuous march in scorching summer heat.

Battle

Hungary built up an expensive but obsolete army, structured similarly to that of King Francis I at
the Battle of Pavia and mostly reliant on heavily-armoured cavalrymen on barded warhorses
similar to gendarmes. The Hungarian deployment for battle consisted of two lines. The first had a
center of mercenary infantry and artillery and the majority of the cavalry on either flank. The
second was a mix of levy infantry and cavalry. The Ottoman army was a more modern force built
around artillery and the elite, musket-armed Janissaries. The remainder consisted of feudal Timarli
cavalry and conscripted levies from Rumelia and the Balkans.

The length of the battle is as uncertain as the number of combatants. It started between 1:00 PM
and 2:00 PM, but the endpoint is difficult to ascertain. The few reliable sources indicate that Louis
left the field at twilight and made his escape under cover of darkness. Since the sun would not have
set until 6:27 PM on 29 August 1526, this would imply that the battle lasted longer than two to
three hours (perhaps as long as four or five).

As the first of Suleiman's troops, the Rumelian army, advanced onto the battlefield, they were
attacked and routed by Hungarian troops led by Pál Tomori. This attack by the Hungarian right
caused considerable chaos among the irregular Ottoman troops, but even as the Hungarian attack
pressed forward, the Ottomans rallied with the arrival of Ottoman regulars deployed from the
reserves. While the Hungarian right advanced far enough at one time to place Suleiman in danger
from Hungarian bullets that struck his cuirass, the superiority of the Ottoman regulars and the
timely charge of the Janissaries, overwhelmed the attackers, particularly on the Hungarian left.
The Hungarians took serious casualties from the skillfully handled Turkish artillery and musket
volleys. The Hungarians could not hold their positions, and those who did not flee were surrounded
and killed or captured. The result was a disaster, with the Hungarians advancing into withering fire
and flank attacks, and falling into the same trap that John Hunyadi had so often used successfully
against the Ottomans. The king left the battlefield sometime around twilight but was thrown from
his horse in a river at Csele and died, weighed down by his heavy armor. Some 1,000 other
Hungarian nobles and leaders were also killed. It is generally accepted that more than 14,000
Hungarian soldiers were killed in the initial battle.
Suleiman could not believe that this small, suicidal army was all that the once powerful country
could muster against him, so he waited at Mohacs for a few days before moving cautiously against
Buda. On 31 August, 2,000 Hungarian prisoners were massacred as the Sultan watched from a
golden throne.